For many years, amateur and professional photographers have endeavored to take quality group photographs. Usually, group photographs are of an assembly with which an individual has an association. For larger groups or more formal groupings, professional photographers specializing in large group photos are employed. School and wedding photos are common examples of large group photos. Additionally, social organizations such as sororities and fraternities, lodges, community service groups, and other groups often desire large group photograph formats. All of these groups have a similar set of needs and challenges.
One group photograph challenge requires managing cooperation among subjects. FIG. 1 illustrates some of these challenges, such as absent persons 100, bad weather 102, closed eyes 104, turned heads 106, poor placement in the group 108 and a host of other cooperative issues. Clearly, trying to coordinate a large number of people for a photo shoot requires patience, diligence and luck.
Another challenge of group photography is coordinating the names associated with each individual subject in the photo. It is common to have an incorrect name associated with a particular subject in the group photo. The biographical information related to the individual subjects in the photo are vulnerable to being recorded incorrectly, limited in the amount of information provided, illegible, or not used at all. In many group photos, the individual subjects fill out a card and provide it to the coordinator. Unfortunately, these cards are vulnerable to being shuffled, lost, damaged by the subject or not turned in. The final product may not include the right name with the right individual subject, or lead to a decision to not include names for fear of getting them wrong. Due to these limitations, it is often very difficult to create group photos based upon biographical information.
If a group photo of a subset of a larger group is desired, numerous photography sessions are required for each subset group. However, if only a single large group photo is shot, it is impossible to create another group photo based upon a subset of the aforementioned biographical information, such as the wedding party, the honor society or a team. Instead, another photo shoot is needed, which requires additional time on the part of all the individual subjects, and once again overcoming many of the same challenges.
Similarly, it is often difficult to get all of the individual subjects for a group photograph together at the same time. For example, many individuals want to send a Christmas or Holiday photo that has the entire family in it. However, it is common to have one or more family members away at the time the photo needs to be taken. Thus, only a portion of the family is in the family photo. This is true for other events such as weddings, family reunions, class reunions, composite office shots, etc.
Yet another challenge related to group photos is the ability to artistically correct the photo after the fact. For example, a subject may be tall enough to block everyone standing behind them, or the subjects line up out of order. In some instances, the subjects may be wearing similar clothing and be placed next to each other. In these instances, the photographer may wish to artistically adjust the placement of any of a number of individuals. Unfortunately, the single shot group photo does not readily facilitate such adjustments. Furthermore, any movement of the subjects within the photo after it has been shot forces extensive manual movement of the individual subject's name or biographical information.
Another problem with group photos is the input device and subsequent quality of a group photo. Currently, a group shot requires an expensive camera capable of capturing large volumes of data. The better the optical input device, the better the ultimate image will be. Thus, the input device also drives a limitation of the group photo. Accordingly, professionals having very expensive camera equipment with very expensive lenses and large format film usually shoot group photos. Currently, the cameras used for group shots are digital cameras providing large quantities of data per pixel.
Often, individuals wish to create a group photo from other photos or raw digital data. Although some software currently allows people to create such photos, it is a time-consuming, difficult task requiring the technical expertise of one having advanced skills. The cost to hire someone to create such a photo is exorbitantly expensive, and often beyond the reach of the average person. Additionally, creating such photos requires a manual positioning and sizing of individuals relative to the other individuals. This creates the challenge of extracting the image of the individual subject from the existing photo or raw digital data.
Even if each individual subject is shot and pasted into a group photo, the sizing remains an issue. FIG. 2 illustrates a perfect set of individual photos manually pasted into a group photo, but highlights the problem of sizing the individual subjects relative to each other. The back row and front rows are identically sized, yet none of the individual subjects are proportional to each other.
What is needed is a way to take group photos that does not require the entire group to be there, and captures all the information about each individual subject in the group photo, referred to hereinafter as “images.” Additionally, the photographer, referred to as an “operator” hereinafter, needs an instrument to easily adjust the image without adding undue expense. Preferably, such a system will be automated and allow the operator to exert minimal input to create the final product.